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Monday, July 13, 2015

Little Hike on the Soapstone Prairie

Soapstone Prairie

Last week my friend Christine found out
that Fort Collins' Natural Areas Program was hosting a free guided
art tour up at Soapstone Prairie, home of the famed Lindenmeier
archaeological site. Subsequently she, myself, and fellow
painter-in-arms Ken Knox took the hour's drive north to explore.

This year's rain had made the semi-arid desert
lush with life. Pronghorn antelope lounged about and our trek was
accompanied by flashes of black and white lark bunting wings. We all remarked to one another that we hadn't seen this many wildflowers in years.

Prickly Pear

Larkspur

Even the locoweed was pretty

We were met in the parking lot by Gary Raham, who conducted the tour. Gary is a gifted science writer,
designer and paleo-illustrator whose passion for the area's history
was contagious. He began by showing us a yardstick with cultural
periods painted on it: thousands of years of silent pre-history, with
only the last 500 years of recorded human existence at the very tip.
Or was the pre-history so silent? The ancient peoples who occupied
the area might not have left written documentation, but they DID
leave a lot of intricate tools that speak volumes to those who can
decode their message. Gary explained the significance of the
discovery of a projectile point stuck in a giant extinct bison's
vertabrae; hitherto scientists thought that people hadn't migrated to
the Americas before 10,000 years ago. With the new evidence jutting
out at them, they had to reconsider the timeline.

Gary gave us handouts and showed us
replicas of the projectile points, needles and beads found in an
washed out arroyo in the distance. He described how the area hadn't
changed much in the 80-odd years since the Smithsonian sent out an
archaological team to investigate the finds. Artist Edwin Cassedy was
a part of that team, recording the lay of the land in watercolor
sketches, and it was fun to walk in his footsteps as we hiked past a
riot of wildflowers: larkspur, Nuttall's sunflowers, mariposa lilies,
and prickly pear cactus blooms. While Ken opted to paint in this
botanical wonderland with another adventurer, the rest of us pressed
on to “see what we could see” at the top of the ridge. We were
rewarded with a view that gave us an idea why ancient peoples favored
this spot: you could see forever!

We set up shop and began to paint.
Well, everyone else got to paint, as it turned out that I'd forgotten
my paint palette at home(!) Normally it lives in my backpack, but it
had gotten so dirty from the last couple of trips I had taken the
time to carefully wash it out...only to leave it behind on the sink
counter where I'd left it. Arrrrgh.

Not to be deterred, I took the
opportunity to do a slower sketch than usual with the intent to take
color notes and paint it from memory when I got back home. And so I did:

That'll teach me to double-check before heading out. Ha.

As we painted, we got to chat further
with our guide as well as another artist who joined us, the lovely
Cathy Morrison. She, too, illustrates books and was a great addition
to our natural history expedition. The sun was intense, but a steady
breeze kept us fairly comfortable. The only setback we had as we
worked was that our location was discovered by various biting flies.
I couldn't help but wonder if the original Smithsonian team was as
harassed as we were!

I kept expecting Julie Andrews to show up behind us singing, "The hills are alive with the sound of muuusic..."

As we headed back down, our guide
stopped in his tracks. Was it a rattlesnake? Nope...a pair of dung
beetles, rolling their “treasure” along the trail. Fascinating.

Barrel Cactus

Even though we'd run a little over in
the allotted time, Gary was gracious enough to chat with us some more,
and to share some iced tea and water he'd brought in a cooler. We
had a real hoot, and learned a lot. In fact, we half-joked that from
now on we should hire a natural history guide for all our paint-out
adventures!